但沒有比這更糟糕的錯誤了。跨過起始與蒙昧時期的衝撞，你會發現浦捷的作品超越了它的形式，並探討著人性的弱點、不安、渴求與遺忘。作為一名藝術家，浦捷保持著孜孜不倦、誠實而深度的研究，他與其所在的時代精神進行著溝通，時而戲謔，時而著迷。期間，他先觀察，緊隨其後的便是檢驗。浦捷的作品有著強烈的連貫性，不追逐虛無。他不信奉上帝，也沒有宗教信仰，更沒有膜拜的偶像。他拋棄了一切，義無反顧地投入到藝術創作的研究中去。

浦捷的藝術就象老子名言所説，“曲則全”；他的作品都由兩層畫面拼疊：歷史性的畫面和當代的畫面，合二為一，成為記憶中完整的視覺經驗。

浦捷的作品，探討著個人的感情矛盾：尚未麻木和分離的狀態，但絕對接納生活的現狀。意識和潛意識的置換並不是矛盾，相比之下，超意識視覺圖像卻顯露了更多的原生狀態，並以此來摧毀潛意識。

浦捷轉換了禪宗的基本原則：“修悟見自心”而轉為“修悟見自我之歷史”，這仿佛拓寬了時間的緯度；它類似于普遍的情感傷痕，卻不同於人們早已習慣的狀態。至此，不可否認，這種擴展的本身所含有的優越感，卻又回歸到了秩序或自然。這是取別於狂喜與迷亂的狀態。浦捷花費了大量的精力去發現、並佔有了他自己的自然——歷史：持續的緊張感，來自於對著燈光摘錄得漠視與潛意識的深刻現實，他一直是這樣，並且永不停止，無論狀況有多麼複雜。

這種努力，造就了一個真正原生態的世界觀和人生觀，它好比現實中添加了一個新的層面，並已完全改變其意義和價值。

禪宗大師們認為：經驗的基本特徵就是重復——它克服了所有的二元論，于自我與非自我之間，于有限與無限之間，于存在與非存在之間，于外形與事實之間，于虛無與盈滿之間，于物質與機會之間。浦捷在自身中央找到了一個轉變，試圖以此替代慣常的含義，這是極其反演變化與唯智主義的(dualizing and intellectualistic)，無需再確認圖像中自我與非自我之間的對抗——它會超越和重現每個對立層面，只是為了享受一個完美的自由和不可脅迫性(incoercibility)，就像風一樣無拘無束。

像浦捷這樣極少數藝術家的作品，視覺語言替代了推理公式，並通過象徵性圖像來加以識別。如同文藝復興時期的藝術家，浦捷以他睿智的好奇心，放棄口述，而是在視覺圖像中表述他的思想。因此，由於缺乏欣賞要領，觀眾可能會難以理解，甚至誤讀他的作品。儘管乍看之下，浦捷的視覺思維容易製造謊言，但事實畢竟不是這樣。人物形象的含意和情景的表述，相比之下，可定為具體的條理，並準確地表達出正式主觀化(subjectivization)的過程，卻不是理性的或示範性的。

我們還得補充，當真正的形象，被概念化的關係或功能性所壓制的時候，形象已經不再具有實質性內容，它只是一個關係和功能性的領域。在第一種情況中是一個有限的不動結構，第二種情況則是一個辯證的過程，被表現衝動所驅使。那些只懂得如何觀看表面形象的人，他們只會看到一個廣義的表像——它不過僅僅是一種支援的意義。那些關注特徵形式的人，註定會去摸索浦捷繪畫中的特殊形象，也會去領悟一種由意義擴展到精神象徵的過程——達到主觀化。換句話説，在夾雜于其他的內容時，這種表現形式也能區分形式的轉捩點。

於是我們必然會想起波德萊爾和他的名言：“詩，純凈無瑕，卻很少有人試著去深入探索，並捫心自問，詩歌，即使經歷了死亡與失敗之痛，也不被科學或道德所融。它沒有真理目標。它就是它。證明真理的方法在別的地方。”與其類似的，在泰奧菲勒•戈蒂埃(Thèophile Gautier)激進的《論藝術之美》一文中提到：藝術，不同於科學，每個藝術家的工作都得從自己開始，這裡沒有進展，不能被無限完善。確切地説，浦捷的作品，就像詩歌那樣新穎。藝術家就是如鏡子一般看世界的詩人，試圖反映每個人的經驗，通過每天畫布上的戰鬥，來領悟普遍規律，無論尺寸大小，都考慮著人的激情、痛苦、愚蠢和創造，也可能詮釋著在我們看來似乎沒有的意義。然而歷史、源頭、源泉等不可或缺的重要的參考根源，為我們奠定了時間，以及不久前還有意識的影響性，仍留有無法消除或否定的痕跡。

浦捷同時兼顧了繪畫縱橫各向的尺度，統一，卻又涉及隔閡，色彩，動畫，振動和反差，並由此而形成了一種立場，賦予了塑造一種感覺或動態。他把時間因素作為敏感的塑造媒介，所以，他的作品便不再是一種“重疊”或“固定”的圖像，卻像影視一樣地展開。這演繹了康得對時空狀態的學説和人們每個活動的基本認識。在浦捷的作品中，藝術的構思裏，暫時性是確確存在的，即附加的時間段，因此，就四維空間對他的作品來説，是至關重要的。

保羅•克利曾嚴厲而非激進地寫下如此格言：繪畫應該“讓人看” ，而不是“讓人看見”，他補充説，繪畫要讓人去看那些並不存在的力量。浦捷的畫面富有與生俱來的動感：運動的層面，電影感的跳躍，內部和外部間的轉移與改變。他的畫按照正規的戲劇法則來完成，這樣，首先得理解他作品，並做出假設。過去的情感、心理、藝術經驗和世俗經驗被點燃，即便這些代表元素會在浦捷所開啟的敘述性歷史中得到釋放和成長，但是，它們的原點和終結都歸於其作品的本身。

浦捷1959年出生，在上海生活和工作，也在當地的美術學院授課。

他的工作室就在莫幹山路。那裏，過去是舊的紡織工廠，這批年歲已舊的倉庫，現已被香格納畫廊與當時默默無聞但如今名聲鵲起的藝術家們用作藝術空間和工作室，如周鐵海，王興偉和浦捷等。如今這裡已經成為一個擁有各種畫廊、大小酒吧與藝術家工作室的熔爐。這裡已經成為收藏家、評論家和美術館館長和越來越多對中國當代藝術有濃厚興趣的人必赴之地。

浦捷藝術風格的形成具有強烈的時間對比：早年，他接受無産階級革命理想的教育，隨後，在大學裏又學習了中國市場經濟的觀念。事實上，他所親歷的兩種截然不同的時代，使他感到格外的矛盾：“我的左手牽著過去，右手則是現在。” 因此，被他稱為“雙重視角”的影像疊加技術，第一次呈現了他所有的生活體驗，而不是刻意去尋找原始的形態特徵。今天，在藝術與生活如此密切的關係中，這種情況是顯而易見的，並觸手可得。

重要的是，浦捷對當下中國文化中的社會現象與形態十分敏感。通過“雙重視角”，他成功地影射了近幾十年在中國社會發生的巨大變化。

因為“記憶”的存在，我們總會去憧憬將來，並回憶過去，我們總是努力去思考，去回憶，抓住一點一滴，並且想以此來重新評定過去，以矛盾來對抗“鎮壓”與“否定”——這兩個可怕的東西經常被禁錮，並扭曲我們自己。這就是浦捷的作品首先要告誡我們的東西。這種微妙的、非暴力的氣氛，由生動的色彩——紅、黃、藍、綠所帶來的衝擊開始。由此，我們不得不想起歌德，他抗拒著讓他難以想像且無法容忍的數學與光學的暴斂。根據他的觀察方法，將色彩僅僅作為純粹的物理現象是無法接受的；他認為這是對牛頓學説的無視，並指責這是埋沒數世紀以來的傑作。相反，這位偉大的浪漫主義的詩人認為，色彩是與人性有關的東西，是與生俱來的自然表現，但經過理性地觀察，與觀者內心靈魂的交流，卻可變得完整和完美。歌德堅持認為：色彩無法通過機械而單一的理論來做出解釋，它必須用政治、美學、心理學、生理學和象徵主義來解釋。浦捷證明並擁有了偉大的德國自然主義者的理論：利用色彩語言，並將這種可能性提升到了最大程度。確實，浦捷作品中的色彩建立起了一個基本的道德立場，對於我們的世界，對於當代的基本層面，這是每件偉大的幻想的作品所擁有的基本要素。浦捷的藝術始終呈現出鬥爭的精神，這是他作品堅定的道德立場。

我們不會忘記今天中國藝術家面向世界開始的創作，一面是肉體與魔鬼，另一面則是西方的藝術實驗——冠冕堂皇的批評和偽造的喜好流派。於是出現了兩種現象：那些緊跟時代的腳步、並以“主義”製造“廉價”藝術，從而滿足他們的銀行賬戶；或者通過嚴格創作“好的藝術”， 來滿足良心的人。由於評判標準並未嚴格確立，對兩者的區分變得越來越困難。結果，除了那些繆斯女神特別眷顧的人，大部分藝術家都試圖同時騎上這兩匹馬，或至少交替地騎。這種努力以及隨後的失敗，將會造成道德與智力及其可怕的混淆。浦捷，不像很多其他的藝術家，他十分了解沒有永恒的作品，他只為徒勞重復和屬於這個時代的藝術而工作，從而獲得了作為藝術家的重要意義。能夠引起共鳴的每件作品，都需要一個人投入所有的思考與真誠。浦捷的作品就是這樣，他繼續嚴謹地做研究，拋棄了對藝術的終極展望，他首先在揭示藝術家本人的狀況，然後置觀眾于一個能夠更深刻體會的現實中去，或許人們不能明確地發現，但會産生一種預感，它們的存在，就像羅盤一樣，可以對自己的良心、精神以及自我的時間做出定位。

The Wind Blows Where It Likes: the art of Pu Jie

Lorenzo 2008.12.

“The work of art is a living being,” the great late Italian critic Carlo L. Ragghianti wrote with conviction.

At first glance this might seem like an astonishing statement but upon careful consideration it is impossible not to include art as a fundamental human existence among others. In fact art is part of the history that is present with the power of its perennial life, and thus it is always current and indelible.

The work of art can represent an intellectual problem and its related solution, it can assume the guise of definition or logical demonstration, and it can be an esthetic signature, commitment or a tool of culture, as well as other things. It can tend toward form rather than figure, or vice versa, or toward function rather than form. What is certain is that the work of art does not speak to all indiscriminately, but rather often remains silent for the uninitiated or sometimes closes itself off, disdainful toward those who would treat it like a “whore.” It opens up and communicates its content only to those who are committed to understanding its language and to interpreting the significant acts that have been carried out in the process of its elaboration.

The problem of understanding visual art becomes more stringent today, at a moment when it has received ever greater space in the everyday life of society, assuming various forms, some unexpected and made possible by technology. Unfortunately there is also the inveterate vice of adopting vision as communication without making any further effort to clarify the specific nature of vision as human production. Too often it is only communicative modalities that are assumed; clearly these keep the creative factor in power, but it remains latent and unrecognized, exhausting fruition in mere perception, without recognizing or looking for its agent.

And so when considering the work of Pu Jie there is an immediate risk that one might classify it in the context of popular art, with references to American pop art from the 1960s. This observation stems from the presence of strong colors and an apparently graphic and elementary sign.

Nothing could be more mistaken. Moving past an initial and uninformed impact, one will discover that Pu Jie’s work, beyond its appearance, has something to do with human beings’ state of frailty, agitation, thirst and oblivion. Pu Jie is an artist in touch with the spirit of his time, a time that he first of all observes and only subsequently experiences, sometimes dramatically and sometimes obsessively, through his incessant, honest and intense research. It is work that possesses great consistency because he is not a hunter of echoes or a pursuer of shadows. Pu Jie has neither gods nor faith, nor does he venerate idols. He abandons everything, leans on nothing and proceeds in his research with only painting.

And this is painting where, as one of Lao-tze’s maxims says, “the whole is in the fragment”; in fact the two levels on which the work is developed – the historical and the contemporary – become a single body where the visual experience of the whole is achieved.

Pu Jie’s works communicate a sense of the individual’s irrelevance, which does not paralyze but ensures that detachment that allows an absolute acceptance of life. And it is not a question of contraposition between conscious and unconscious, but rather of a super-conscious vision that implements original nature and, in so doing, destroys the unconscious.

Pu Jie transposes the fundamental Zen formula: “seeing into the nature of one’s own being” into “seeing into the nature of one’s own history,” like a timeless opening up wide; it is something akin to a catastrophic trauma of ordinary consciousness, something radically different from all the states to which men are accustomed. At the same time, however, this opening is what leads back to what, in a superior sense, should be considered as normal or natural. Thus it is the opposite of ecstasy or a trance. Pu Jie makes a great effort to go in the direction of discovery and to take possession of his own nature-history: a constant tension toward the light that extracts from ignorance or from the subconscious the profound reality of what has always been and will never cease to be, whatever the specific condition.

The consequence of this effort is a truly original view of the world and of life, as if a new dimension had been added to reality and had completely transformed its meaning and value.

According to Zen masters, the essential trait of experience that repeats is the overcoming of all dualism: dualism between inside and outside, between ego and non-ego, between finite and infinite, between being and non-being, between appearance and reality, between emptiness and fullness, between substance and chance. Pu Jie seeks a shift of the center of the self, he tries to replace usual meanings, which are dualizing and intellectualistic, with an image that no longer recognizes an ego opposed to a non-ego, that transcends and recaptures the terms of every antithesis, just to enjoy a perfect freedom and incoercibility, like that of the wind when it blows where it likes.

In the work of only a few artists, like Pu Jie, visual language replaces discursive formulation, language that moreover is not identifiable with symbolic image. Like Italian Renaissance artists, Pu Jie, with his intelligent curiosity, expresses his ideas not in words but in visual images that, as such, are understood by few or sometimes misunderstood, since the viewer does not have the key for interpreting them. Indeed Pu Jie’s visual thought does not lie, as it might appear to at first glance, in the meanings of figures, in the description of situations, but rather in the processes of formal subjectivization that are defined in their specific terms precisely as expressive rather than as rational or demonstrative.

We might also add that the substantiality of the figure is overcome by the concept of relationship or function between phenomena; the image is no longer an object having substance, but a field of functions and relationships. In the first case it would be a finite and immobile structure, in the second case it is a dialectical process in progress, charged with the expressive impulse that has placed it in motion. Those who only know how to see the figure, see a generalized appearance that counts only as a support for significance. Those who seek in Pu Jie’s figures the specific manner of their appearance, determined by the investment of the form that is specific to them, can also grasp the process that has unfolded to begin from a meaning or from a mental symbol, to arrive at its subjectivization. In other words it is the expressive form that, with the remaining content, also distinguishes the inflection of the figures.

Here Baudelaire inevitably comes to mind, with his statement that “Poetry, however little one seeks to delve inward, to interrogate one’s own soul, has no other aim than itself… Poetry cannot, under pain of death or of failure, assimilate itself to science or morals. It does not have Truth as its goal. It only has itself. The methods of demonstrating truth are elsewhere.” And almost analogously, Thèophile Gautier, in his polemic “On the Beautiful in Art,” states that “art, unlike science, begins again with every artist, in art there is no progress… it is not additionally perfectible.” Pu Jie’s painting is, precisely, new, as poetry. The artist is a poet who looks out at the world like a mirror, wanting to reflect every human experience, seeking to understand a universal law through a daily battle with canvases, large and small, contemplating the human passions, suffering and follies of our days and creating and also giving meaning to what might seem to us to be lacking in meaning. However without ever forgetting the history, the source, the fount, the indispensable and vital reference to the roots, to the foundation of our time, to the recent past that still affects consciousness, leaving traces that would be criminal to remove or negate.

Pu Jie paints in simultaneous unity between depth and extension; this integration involves gaps, colors, animations, vibrations and contrasts. A field of forces and actions ensues, capable of giving plastic form to a feeling or movement. He integrates the time factor as a plastic and sensitive medium; thus the work is no longer a simultaneous or fixed image, but unfolds as if it were a film. It is the expression of Immanuel Kant’s fundamental recognition of space and time as conditions of knowledge and of every activity of man. In Pu Jie’s work the temporal agent in artistic elaboration is revealed to be substantial, namely the addition of time, and therefore four-dimensionality becomes essential to his art.

Paul Klee, in a drastic although non-polemical aphorism, wrote that painting should not “render the visible” but “renders visible,” and he added that painting renders visible those forces that do not exist. Pu Jie’s painting is made up of movements that are felt through intuition: movements of dimension, cinematic jumps, shifts and alternations between inside and outside. His painting is complete in this formal dramaturgy, and it is in this way, first of all, that it should be understood and assumed. Precedents in terms of sensibility, psyche, artistic experience and worldly experience burn through, even if they represent elements that unleash and nurture the moment in which Pu Jie initiates an expressive history, which, however, has its original and ultimate reason only in itself.

Pu Jie was born in 1959, lives and works in Shanghai, where he teaches at the Art Academy.

His studio is located on Mogashan Road. Previously an old textile factory, it was for years the warehouse for the Shanghart Gallery and a studio for then-unknown but now extremely renowned artists, such as Zhou Thiehai, Wang Xingwei and Pu Jie. Today the space is a crucible of art galleries of every type, bars of various sizes and artists’ studios. It is an obligatory destination for a growing number of people, collectors, critics and museum directors who are interested in contemporary Chinese art.

Pu Jie’s formative years were characterized by a strong dichotomy: from an early age, he was educated according to the ideals of proletarian revolution, but later, at university, he learned about the Chinese view of market economy. The fact that he personally lived through two such different eras led him to feel paradoxical: “my left hand encloses the past, my right the present.” And so the technique of superimposing images, which he calls “dual visual angle,” emerged first of all from his life experience, rather than from the search for an original stylistic characteristic. And in this case the close relationship between art and life is extremely evident and palpable.

Pu Jie is interested, above all, in investigating the social phenomena and forms that contemporary Chinese culture assumes. And it is precisely through “dual visual angle” that he manages to suggest to us the flow of changes that have occurred in Chinese society during recent decades.

In order to know where we are going we cannot help but consider our past, we cannot live “without memory,” and we must make a continuous effort to remember, to recall, to not skip over passages, to not leave black holes in the past, to retrieve what was good, to criticize everything terrible and negative that occurred, to take on contradictions, and to not yield to repression or negation, the two diabolical mechanisms that too often imprison and dehumanize us. This is the admonition that, before anything else, emerges from Pu Jie’s work. And this occurs in subtle, never violent fashion, beginning with an initial impact that is always captivating and characterized by vivid colors – yellows, blues, greens, reds. Here we cannot help but recall Wolfgang Goethe, who rebelled against the inconceivable and to him intolerable tyranny of mathematics and optics. According to his way of seeing it was inadmissible for colors to be merely a purely physical phenomenon; he considered this to be the arrogance of the Newtonians, accusing them of having buried the work of centuries. The great romantic poet thought that colors, on the contrary, were something human, that they undoubtedly had their origin in various natural manifestations, but found their composition and perfection in the eye in the mechanics of vision, in the spirituality of the observer’s soul. Colors, Goethe insisted, cannot be explained through a solely mechanistic theory, but must also be explained by poetics, esthetics, psychology, physiology and symbolism. Pu Jie demonstrates and shares the theory of the great German naturalist and utilizes the language of color to the greatest extent possible. Indeed the colors of Pu Jie’s canvases establish an essential moral stance toward the world in which we live and toward the average contemporary level that is the fundamental basis for every potent work of imagination. A firmly anchored ethical level is something for which Pu Jie has fought from the beginning.

We must never forget that every Chinese artist who sets out to create a work today is facing the world, with flesh and the devil on the one hand and, on the other, western artistic experimentation with its high-sounding pages of criticism and the spurious sectarian preferences of experts. A fork in the road is reached: to follow the erratic aspirations of those who, adhering to the fashions of the time, thrive on “isms” and as a consequence make “cheap” art to satisfy their bank accounts; or to rigorously apply oneself to creating “good art” that has the merit of satisfying one’s conscience. Since the criterion has never been firmly established, it becomes ever-difficult to distinguish. As a result many artists, except the most fervent disciples of the muse, attempt to sit astride both horses simultaneously, or at least alternately. This effort and the subsequent failure to succeed in both attempts has produced horrible paroxysms of moral and intellectual obfuscation. Pu Jie, unlike so many others, knows full well that no enduring work, destined both for the rubbish heap and for the centuries, has ever been achieved by an artist with twofold intentions. The invention of every work that has resonance demands the integrated effort of one’s entire mind and entire heart. This occurs in the work of Pu Jie, who continues his research with rigor, without ever losing sight of the ultimate purpose of art, to first of all reveal the artist to himself, and to then place viewers in a position to intuit more profound realities, perhaps without perceiving them clearly, but to have a presentiment of their presence, thereby finding a compass to orient themselves toward their own conscience and in relationship with this toward the spirit of their own time.